Probably depends on the person. My 79-year-old father has early stages of Alzheimer's/dementia and can't remember the names of his grandkids. I would say that he can't use the internet just fine - even if he wants to.

Sorry to hear about your father, neverartful; that has to be incredibly difficult. Wishing you peace, for whatever it's worth.

Sorry to hear that. Stay strong!

I had taught my grandma how to use a feature-phone and she was pretty happy with it. Later she was diagnosed with dementia, that phone's battery is dead for some years now. Somewhere down the line, she forgot how to use her phone (and pretty much anything else). It's sad watching her unlearn things.

at that point, he probably should be considered internet-disabled (among other things)... as an analogy, would you expect a paraplegic to swim with it's own body? sorry, but that's reality...

African paraplegic or Mexican? Pink Floyd wants to know (they bankrolled monty python and the holy grail.)

My mom is in her 70s and she has three laptops that she uses regularly - an old netbook that they use when they travel, a 13 inch laptop that she works with away from home and her main computer is a 17 inch that is easy on her eyes. She also has every kind of gadget and adapter known to man, a portable inkjet printer and two or three other working printers at home.

Not to mention my old Mac Mini I gave her after installing Windows 7 that she lets her students use when she tutors.

My dad has his own 17 inch Dell that he uses and he loves the Roku TV that I got him for Father’s Day.

Even worse, they already had DSL but they got cable internet when I stayed there for the summer and was working remotely. She kept both just in case one started acting flaky.

She uses Word and Publisher all of the time.

It helps that my mom is a retired high school teacher and we always had computers in the house since 1986.

I have relatives that will never use the internet, they are just from a different era and have no interest. Nor do they have cellphones. Conversely I have other similar aged relatives that can't get enough of it on their laptops, iPads and smart phones. There definitely seems to be a split mentality for that generation.

Yep, my 80yo mom can't get enough of it. It's funny, because 15 years ago she poo-pooed it and didn't see why she'd need a computer or the internet.

Absolutely - this article doesn't claim otherwise. Disproportionately (by a large margin) they don't, but even so about two-thirds of the 65+ age group does use the internet. (See the age chart about halfway down the article.)

My dad is in his late 60s and belongs to a generation of non-tech office workers that had to learn to use computers without mice for word processing, spreadsheets, email, etc.

For some older people the logic of the operating system is nearly incommunicable. They get keyboards, as they've typed. They can get a grip on a mouse. But after that they've got the face of a dog that's just been shown a new trick.

Not just older people. For a lot of people the GUI is the computer, and anything inside may as well be magic. I’ve known more than one who has referred to the whole computer enclosure as the hard drive.

Obviously, because the screen is the computer, so the big box has to be the hard drive :)